Disagreement is inherently interwoven with the exercise of power, for it restricts the “action-environment” of the interactants and entails a “clash of interests” (Locher 2004:93). In this section, the relative power and authority of the therapist in cognitive therapy for depression will be discussed, with special attention given to the epistemic and deontic authority of the therapist.
7.1.1 Exerting the epistemic authority of the therapist in disagreement speech event
Management of disagreement and disaffiliation in social practices is inextricably linked to epistemic primacy or knowledge asymmetry (Stivers et al. 2011). Epistemic authority refers to the relative power in a specific domain of knowledge. People who are assumed and expected to have primary access to specific knowledge domains in dynamic interactions are considered to occupy a superior epistemic status (Heritage 2012). According to Heritage (2012), the interactants occupy different positions in an epistemic gradient from K+ (more knowledgeable) to K- (less knowledgeable) in dynamic interactions.
In cognitive therapy for depression, it can be observed that the relative epistemic status between the therapist and the client in therapeutic talk cast a great impact on the therapists’ disagreement strategy.
CHAPTER EIGHT CONCLUSION
8.1 Major findings of the present study
In terms of the linguistic realizations of disagreement, two types of disagreement are identified in cognitive therapy for depression examined in the present study, i.e., the confrontational disagreement, and non-confrontational disagreement.
Seven forms of confrontational disagreement are identified within the impoliteness framework of Culpeper (1996) and Bousfield (2008), i.e., disassociating, criticizing, asking challenging questions, common sense reasoning, frightening, and so on. These types of unmitigated disagreements explicitly impinge on the positive or negative face of the client (Bousfield 2008; Brown & Levinson 1987; Culpeper 1996). They are also considered to be disruptive to the therapeutic project and therapeutic relationship in previous studies on disagreement in psychotherapeutic context.
Apart from the confrontational disagreement, the therapist also conducts disagreements in mitigated or implicit ways. The non-confrontational disagreements are subdivided into six types in the light of the mitigated disagreement strategies delimited by Locher (2004). In the present study, therapists’ non-confrontational disagreement strategies are mainly embodied in the employment of mitigating devices like using hedges, personally/emotionally colored reasoning, asking inquiring questions, using partial agreement, giving tentative advice, and using humor or banter.
The varied forms of therapists’ disagreement are observed to function effectively in activating the core common ground, seeking emergent common ground and bringing in emergent common ground. By these means, therapists’ disagreement positively facilitates the therapeutic project of cognitive restructuring, i.e., the identification, evaluation and substitution of cognitive distortions of the client.
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